It wasn’t a trap. “I think I knew what I was getting myself into,” he says now.

Michael Carter-Williams could have excelled as a freshman most anywhere and could have excelled at Syracuse if the circumstances warranted. It did not turn out that way.

A dozen times during his freshman season, Carter-Williams sat on the Syracuse bench and had as much to do with the outcome as the guy at the top of the Carrier Dome (or the KFC Yum! Center, or the RAC, or the Consol Energy Center or—you get the picture). When Syracuse was eliminated from the Big East Tournament by Cincinnati, he got on the floor long enough to say he’d been there but not enough to register as having played a minute.

Over the final 18 games, he didn’t even log an hour’s worth of playing time. You know who gets that kind of playing time? Walk-ons. Or maybe the person covering the team for the student paper. But not a McDonald’s All-American.

“My most important thing, that me and my parents discussed, is how I was going to get better every day,” Carter-Williams told Sporting News. “I didn’t think I was one of those players coming into college demanding that I start.

“I expected to get more playing time than I did, but that’s just how it worked. That’s how (coach Jim) Boeheim runs his program, which is great, because look where I am now.”

And where might that be? Second in the NCAA in assists at 8.2 per game, running the attack for the No. 6-ranked team in college basketball and co-leader in the race for the Big East championship. Even with only 24 games as a starter plus all those DNPs from a year ago, he is widely projected as a top-10 pick should he choose to enter the 2013 NBA Draft.

The season has not been entirely perfect. Carter-Williams has not been. He averages 3.6 turnovers per game, so those risks he takes could stand to pay off at a slightly higher rate. He is shooting only 37.5 percent from the field and 28.9 percent on 3-pointers, although his clutch jump shots helped defeat Louisville and Cincinnati in closely competitive games.

And there was the incident at a mall before Christmas, when he reportedly was caught shoplifting from a store and paid a $500 fine to settle the issue, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard. Carter-Williams told Sporting News at the time that the incident was “a big misunderstanding.”

Carter-Williams is a 6-6 point guard from Hamilton, Mass., with the kind of vision rare among point guards of any size. Even when the game’s greatest passers stood out as the game’s greatest passers, there at least were a few of them around at any one time: Bird and Magic and Stockton, then Stockton and Hardaway and Kidd, then Kidd and Nash, and now? Well, Kidd and Nash still are hanging on, but the vision thing just isn’t common in the game any longer.

Carter-Williams has that special touch: The ability to see the potential in a play, the audacity to attempt what seems implausible, the skill to pull it off.

“There’ve been coaches in my past who tried to tell me ‘no,’ ” he said. “I think it’s in my game to make the tough pass, to take a chance. It’s hard to explain. When I see a split-second opening, I’m going to go for it. It’s also time and situation; if it’s a close game, I’m not going to go for it. If we’re down one, up two, I probably won’t take a chance.”

What Carter-Williams understands about his gift, however, is that this ability to discern openings others cannot and to deliver accurate passes that exploit these opportunities “means a lot more than just those two points.” It is disheartening to a defense that believes it has defended a possession well. It is energizing to teammates who cut harder, sharper, knowing their point guard very well might find them with a scoring pass at any moment.

Carter-Williams obviously had to sense a similar degree of trust regarding his coaches last season. In the modern game, a McDonald’s All-American who doesn’t play as a freshman is either injured or ineligible or, as with Brandon Jennings, off in Italy playing for money.

“Definitely, there were a couple of times when it got the better of me and I lashed out at Coach,” Carter-Williams said. “Those were mistakes I made. Coach told me if I wasn’t yelling at him, he wouldn’t know what to expect from me. I was a McDonald’s All-American and I wasn’t playing ... he knew I wanted to be out there.

“It was tough. I can’t lie. There were some real tough days, some real frustrating days.”

It was simple math that kept Carter-Williams out of the rotation last season. Dion Waiters was on his way to becoming the No. 4-overall pick in the 2012 NBA Draft, and he wasn’t even starting. Brandon Triche started from his first game at SU but was giving up minutes to accommodate Waiters’ imposing talent. Scoop Jardine was a fifth-year senior on his way to finishing with 1,295 career points, and he was yielding playing time.

There just wasn’t room for MCW when the games counted.

“I was trying to get Scoop and Brandon and Dion better every day in practice,” Carter-Williams said. “It taught me to be humble every day in basketball, that I wasn’t going to be given anything.

“I saw a lot of guys getting time that I had played against and either I got the better of or it was good competition. I got frustrated at times and compared myself against them and this and that. But at the end of the day, I can only control myself. It definitely motivated me. To see those guys do work out on the floor, knowing that I had competed against them, it pushed me to go harder.”

That Carter-Williams handled the situation so well, that he even remained at Syracuse for his sophomore year, made an impression on those who know the game best. There are freshmen with far less talent and potential and far more court time who still feel shortchanged and rush to transfer at the first opportunity.

“How he had toughness last year—McDonald’s All-American, didn’t play as much as he wanted to—and he certainly improved,” Rutgers coach Mike Rice said. “Unlimited potential. He’s so long it’s not fair. It’s just amazing, when you’re standing on the sideline looking at his length. A consistent jumper and more strength and size and you’re talking about a first-round draft choice.”

A year ago, Carter-Williams had all of the same qualities and yet was a bench-warmer. Looking back, one can say he handled his first test as a college basketball player better than most.